Kubrick Ranked (complete)

Finally.

Finally a Stanley Kubrick that I adore. The man is a master filmmaker, no doubt, but as BrandonHabes has heard endlessly, I struggle to connect with his films. After a lot of deliberation and self-reflection, I’ve come to find that this disconnect ultimately boils down to personal preference. His most well-regarded works are too cold, too cerebral, and too pessimistic for yours truly. I always admire their technical mastery, and there are quite a number of his films that I sincerely enjoy. But, besides Paths of Glory, which wears its humanity on its sleeve, there hasn’t been any of his films that reach into that primal instinct of mine, those “feeling” receptors in my mind and heart. That is, until now. Funny how a film like this waited until the very end to suck me in and recontextualize my entire relationship with this near-deified auteur.

Eyes Wide Shut focuses on how our subconscious manifests itself in reality. The dream-like nature of the film entices the audience, and carries them afloat this two and a half hour journey where time feels immaterial. As soon as I felt the film began, I felt like it had ended. It’s almost as if it was a sort of mirage, a shimmer in my own subconscious, a dream I had experienced myself. You know when you wake up having just experienced something really special but can only remember the biggest plot points? And even then they are obscured by some sort of mind fog that renders so many dreams opaque in reality? It’s kind of like that. And I can’t help but find my experience with the film and how it compares to actual dreams I’ve had to be anything but intentional on Kubrick’s part. The long takes, where we follow Bill Harford in his pursuit of adultery and the truth, are trance-like in their execution; the Christmas colors and lights add a visible haze to many of the scenes, making what we experience more ethereal. Through the film’s mise en scene, we can actually observe the subconscious; the passionate reds and greens and purples, the nocturnal desires, Dan Harford’s unconsenting intoxication; through the images on screen. It is, quite frankly, astounding. Funnily enough, and this must be intentional, too, the most memorable segment of the film, and in my opinion the greatest single segment in Kubrick’s entire oeuvre, is the one least obscured by this haze. There are no Christmas lights, no hazy purples, no long takes that focus on Dr. Harford in particular. The sex-cult-orgy is pure nightmare fuel, and it sticks out clearer in my mind than many of my most cherished memories. I’ve seen the film once, and I reckon I can accurately retrace those scenes, shot for shot, if I tried my darnedest. I guess what I am saying here is that the way Kubrick chooses to film these scenes injects the audience with the same confusion, desire, and vibe as Dr. Harford. There’s no doubt he’d ever forget those moments at the estate, either (if they happened at all.)

By injecting us into the mind of Bill Harford, the film connects us to the protagonist in a way many of Kubrick’s other films don’t (in my opinion.) There’s always been a streak of individualism in Kubrick’s filmography. Each of his works, especially those filmed after A Space Odyssey, focus on how the machine dehumanizes man. The machine in many of these contexts are the social systems that are we surrounded by. No matter how much I’m appalled by A Clockwork Orange, or how much I’m unconvinced by The Shining, their messages of an unconsenting conformity of the human psyche is one worth telling. One need only look at the first half of Full Metal Jacket to see the devastating effects forced conformity can bring upon humanity. In Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick takes his ideas about evils of machinery and adds a crucial wrinkle: by making a claim that our own subconscious is also something to be weary of, that it is a machine in and of itself. It takes the sort of brutality found in A Clockwork Orange and adds a sort of determinist edge to it. It is his most intimate claim on the desire of man, and it is this intimacy that connects me to the film like none of his other works have. Basically, it is not only these constructs with which Man must eternally grapple, destroying and reshaping ourselves throughout history… we must also contend with ourselves from the inside out. In fact, Kubrick might be arguing that these damning constructs come FROM a failing of the subconscious, of desires left unchecked, which run rampant through the world thus creating these repressive regimes, like a mutant creation spawned from radioactive fallout. Dan’s mind twists Alice’s words, spoken in a euphoric haze, into a desperate, near-pathetic desire to get even. He uses his status as a doctor, something else that social structures have graced upon him, to unlock doors which lead to a mystery far beyond the scope of a simple night on the prowl. What he discovers, plainly, is that the world is structured much more nefariously and much more erotically than he had initially assumed. One story about a Naval officer worked like a virus to infect Doctor Harford, and unlocked a world of perception he’d never seen before. Suddenly, the women of the night are made available to him. Suddenly, a patient’s daughter, a roommate, an abused child, are revealed as cogs in the wheel of a machine he was ignorant of. And we, the audience, can either believe everything we see or not, and we’d be right, for the film makes no claims, through its mise en scene, of what is real and what is just a figment of Dan’s subconscious fantasies. It’s fucking brilliant.

Through its thesis and technicality, Eyes Wide Shut enters the realm of the intimate like no other film in the auteur’s career. It is still detached, but it is no longer distant. It feels like laying next to a lover with whom you’ve just gotten into a huge spat. Detached, but shit at least you’re still in the same bed! On top of this, Eyes Wide Shut is Kubrick’s most earnest and accurate depiction of women. Any claims of “inceldom” that I alluded to in prior discussions / reviews I hereby retract. I think the man, through his choice of obsession, was forced to make the women in his films they way they are. Here, Alice has immense power. But, that just goes to show how little it takes to shuffle the deck of desire within one’s subconscious. Many other factors influence Dr. Harford beyond her initial infection, including perhaps most prominently the climax with Ziegler.

In any case, the film has completely changed my views on Kubrick. Where before I was lukewarm, perhaps now I’m heating up. By reflecting upon his other works with Brandon’s Star Child thesis in mind, I can now see how much they interconnect, how the man employed genre to achieve his ends to great effect. On a personal level, they may forever be a bit too cold and cerebral for me to adore. But, as pieces of media, I no longer consider them to be “crossing the tightrope of pretentiousness so treacherously that I sometimes struggle to buy-in.” No, it’s not that. It’s just that I like my films with a bit more romance, heart and soul. The soul in Kubrick is rotted by the social structures and subconscious damnations unconsciously repeated through time immaterial. But, with the auteur’s final word, a simple “fuck,” there is no doubt some light at the end of the tunnel, a glimmer of hope for humanity. The Star Child, however imperfect, WILL be born again. People will continue to fuck, things will continue to progress one way or another. And Kidman’s inflection may assert that this will be for the better.